thin helmet, but she didn't even turn. She just darted sideways and then forward—straight through the panel into the utter black emptiness of space! A flash of light—and she was gone!

The panel closed so soundlessly you could have heard a pin drop.

I had trouble with my breath again. For an instant my throat had an iron brace around it. Then I remembered that she hadn't gone out unprotected into the void. Her suit would keep the cold out, and the magnetic suction disks on her wrists and knees would enable her to cling to the hull, to crawl along it. But if she'd gone out to do a repair job on the hull, she had the kind of courage you read about in the Admiralty Reports.

If I had it, it was glazed over with a thick coating of ice. I stood braced against the bulkhead, the old Adam in me chanting a hymn to life, a hymn to the Sun, and feeling glad I wasn't in her shoes.

What a way for a guy to feel!

Then something happened to me. I saw her face again, deep in my mind, and it seemed to be pleading with me. It wasn't just a pleading. There was music and wonder in it!

I could hear the pound of surf on a golden beach, and the sun was warming the sea and the air, and she was in my arms and I was kissing her.

Then it was night and the palms were bending lower over us, and the moonlight was so bright I could hardly see the web of radiance around her head. But I could hear the rise and fall of paddles, and someone singing far off over the water. We were running down the beach toward the pounding surf. Water was glistening on her tanned arms and I could hear her laughter.

Pete had leapt to his feet. He was staring at me, sweat standing out on his forehead in great, shining beads.

"What did I tell you, son?" he groaned. "A sickness of the mind—"

His voice thickened, broke.

The terror in his stare made me realize how close to the brink I was. His refusal to believe the evidence of his eyes was an attempt at rationalization, but it wasn't a good attempt.

He was assuming the worst, taking his own madness for granted.

I grabbed him by both shoulders. "You're as sane as I am!" I yelled, shaking him. "That girl was here when we took over! A stowaway! What's so crazy about that?"

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